Build:Chronomancer - Rifle Mantra Support

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Support and Control

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on September 11, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A support Chronomancer build utilizing the latest addition to the Mesmer arsenal, the Rifle.

Skill Bar

Rifle

Sword/Shield

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

For the optional slot:

• Feedback - high anti-projectile uptime, quite useful against specs like Rifle Deadeyes or Longbow Dragonhunters. It's also a combo field for more Chaos Aura access and could even be used as a mobility/anti-condition tool when traited. Currently the most popular option.

• Mantra of Concentration - another stun break and extra healing via Restorative Mantras.

• Mantra of Resolve - if more condition cleansing is needed.

Elite

• Gravity Well - the CC could help set up kills for the team.

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Specializations

Variants

• Ego Restoration is another viable option, improving various clone related traits and skills. It's also the only real option when you're NOT playing with Time Warp and Feedback.

Equipment

Rifle

Sigil

Sigil

Sword

Shield

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Relics

• Relic of Rivers - lowers your burst healing by giving up Flock's healing proc, but the extra Alacrity allows you to spam your heals a bit more often.

• Relic of the Herald - trades group healing for better boon duration (up to ~17%). The relic has no internal cooldown and multiple stacks of the same boon can grant you several stacks of the Herald bonus, which makes this very easy to utilize with shatter skills that are boosted by various traits and can apply 5 or more boons in an instant. Consider taking a boon duration rune like Rune of Leadership or Rune of Herald.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Chronomancers gain access to brand new Shatter skills that are more or less the same as the old Shatter skills. F1 is still the power damage one, F2 still has Confusion and F3 Dazes targets.

• In the F5 slot Chronos gain a new Shatter that's unique to them: Continuum Split and its chain skill Continuum Shift. More about these later.

• Time Marches On provides a passive movement speed bonus, rendering movement focused runes unnecessary.

General

• While Rifle adds a strong ranged option to the build, many of your important healing, cleansing and boon sharing tools like mantras and shatters still have to be used in melee range of allies.

• Singularity Shot creates a portal for a brief period of time which allows allies to teleport to your location, but in ranked games (especially solo) without voice communication the odds of someone actually reacting in time and taking the portal are virtually 0. View this as a ranged barrier sharing tool with extra Resistance on top.
  • Alternatively you can use this as sort of a "distress call". If you activate the portal while being chased by enemies, you give your team a chance to randomly take the portal and show up at your location to peel for you.

• With Rifle you can afford to stay in range and support your team from a safe distance. When Rifle skills are used up you're going to have to go melee and provide support with mantras and shatters. The Sword/Shield set allows you to spend time in melee and survive enemy focus for some time.

• Mantra of Recovery (MoR) has quite a long cast time when you have to charge it up - either block line of sight for enemies by hiding behind objects or obtain Stability from shatter skills to protect it. This mantra unlocks the skill Power Return.

• There's some decision making involved when you're using charges of Power Return. Upon pressing this skill 1 charge is consumed and immediately starts recharging, but you'll still have a second charge available. The recharge time is 20 seconds but you can speed it up with Alacrity. If you end up using the 2nd charge before gaining back the 1st one, all the time you've spent waiting for the 1st charge to come back will be lost and Mantra of Recovery will go on full CD. For this reason it's often beneficial to use both charges back-to-back if your allies are taking heavy damage and you feel like you couldn't wait for the 1st charge to come back before having to use the skill again, since using both charges together allows MoR itself to start recharging sooner. The downside is that you're losing out on an instant reactive heal when this mantra is on CD.

• You're allowed to spam shatters more freely while Signet of Illusions is available. This signet is mainly taken for its active, reseting all of the F1-4 shatters with the press of a button.

• Every shatter skill grants a small amount of Stability. Timing here is key, but since shatters are all instant that's not a problem. This Stability could be used to negate interrupts (which is especially useful when channeling a rez, an important skill or a shield block). It's just enough to walk or dodge out of area-denial skills like Dragon's Maw too.

• Feedback (when traited with Temporal Enchanter) isn't just an anti-projectile tool - the Superspeed and Resistance coupled with being an instant cast ability makes this a great skill to use for kiting opponents. Being able to move and dodge while Immobilized could save your life!
  • This skill could even be used offensively, as the Superspeed helps your melee teammates chase after enemies and the Resistance lets them ignore conditions that could negatively impact their damage such as Weakness, Blind or Fear.

• Ideally you should have 2-3 clones out before pressing Rewinder as the recharge of this skill scales with the number of clones shattered, but even without that the skill offers great value with all the trait synergy baked into it.

• Shatter skills grant Alacrity. Consider using Split Second (F1 shatter) while roaming between capture points in order to speed up the recharge of your other abilities. It's not much, but still a better use of resources than doing nothing at all.

Healing/Support

• Every shatter skill grants a bit of Quickness and Stability. Consider using shatters to cover important casts while pressured.

• Rifle has 3 ranged support skills (not counting the auto): Journey, Inspiring Imagery and Singularity Shot.

• Journey heals the least amount of the 3 but is the quickest to go off, making this the most reactive support skill on rifle.

• Inspiring Imagery is slower, has a travel time and creates a combo field on the ground called Abstraction. You heal allies by detonating Abstraction. Abstraction is a mix of raw healing and damage mitigation through Blind and Weakness and is the only source of condition removal you have aside from shatters and your healing skill.

• Singularity Shot doesn't heal but rather it grants a higher amount of barrier than what the other skills could heal for. This can be used proactively to shield allies who are expected to take damage, or it could buy you time to heal low HP allies.

• The 2 main sources of healing outside Rifle are mantras and shatters. Both of these have to be used in melee range, hugging allies.

• On top of healing allies shatter skills also cleanse conditions and grant various boons via Bountiful Disillusionment.
  • Shatter healing scales with the number of clones you have. Try using shatters after skills that spawn clones, like Illusionary Leap.

• Try to maximize Chaos Aura uptime! Chaos Aura sources in the build:
  • Inspiring Imagery's chain skill (Rifle #3) - this is also shared with allies within range.
  • Rewinder (Shatter #2)
  • Executing leap or blast finishers inside Ethereal Fields such as Feedback or Time Warp
  • Note: auras don't stack in duration! Wait for one to run out before applying a new one whenever possible.

• While the build may lack a mass condition cleansing tool, it has plenty of instant smaller cleanses you could chain together:
  • Using any shatter skill removes 1 condition.
  • Every charge of Mantra of Recovery cleanses 1 condition via Mender's Purity.
  • Abstraction (Rifle #3's chain skill) removes 2 conditions.
  • Glamour skills such as Feedback or Time Warp can grant Resistance when traited, allowing you to ignore conditions like Immobilize.
  • Distortion is your time-out button, shielding you from any form of damage (except for fall damage).

Continuum Split (CS)

• Continuum Split allows you to use your skills twice.

• It's best used for double elite activation and allied healing. Press CS just before you finish casting Time Warp then unload as many Shatters, Phantasms, Mantras, Wells and skills in general as you possibly can while CS is active.
  • Note: Time Warp has an aftercast duration. If you don't have any clones and have to use a short Continuum Split you should actually activate CS right after Time Warp's cast bar has filled up. This isn't very intuitive, but if the aftercast is still playing after CS has ended, Time Warp will go on full CD and won't reset back with the rest of your skills even if the Time Warp field was created during the active CS window. Essentially the only thing that matters for this interaction is the period during which the aftercast takes place - therefore if you activate CS after placing Time Warp you're still going to get the cooldown reset as long as you activate CS before the aftercast finishes.

• Rewinder (for Chaos Aura), Distortion (for Stability) and Feedback are top priority skills to use while CS is active. These are relatively high impact instant skills you should have no trouble fitting into even a ~1s CS window along with your elite, although Rewinder and Distortion share a global cooldown which means you can't press them at the same time and might have trouble fitting both into a shorter CS window.

• Important: CS prevents capture point contribution, same as Distortion. If you're the only one holding a point, sometimes you might want to try keeping the time spent in CS to the bare minimum.

• Phantasms, combo fields, auras and applied boons will still persist after CS has ended. Spam as many skills as possible while CS is active for the extra bonuses like Alacrity. While your HP's going to revert back to what it was when you activated CS, you get to keep everything else (boons, fields, auras) and teammates even get to keep the healing.

• If you absolutely have to, even Continuum Split itself could be used defensively. It reverts your HP back once it has ended, so if you can activate it right before taking damage then it acts like a healing skill with a delay. You'll also be returned to your original position, allowing you to pull off things like using CS before jumping off a wall and teleporting back with Continuum Shift once the enemies have jumped after you. This however is a bit predictable and could even backfire, as you're inevitably going to return to your starting position in a few seconds so they could just wait it out and burst you when CS ends.

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